Copper Mine Glut Puts Brakes on Latin America’s Clean-Power Boom

The global copper slump is helping to tap the brakes on Latin America’s fastest-growing renewable-energy market.

Chile, the world’s biggest copper producer, has been adding solar panels and wind turbines for two years to supply power-thirsty smelters that process ore from remote mines in the sun-baked northern desert. But with metal prices half what they were five years ago, output fell and energy demand slowed. That’s compounding an electricity glut in a self-contained power grid thousands of miles from population centers in the stick-shaped South American country.